Column: Business 51 redesign must consider past

When Gertrude Stein returned to Oakland, Calif., she couldn't find her childhood home. In its place were new streets and new houses. "There is no there there," she famously said.

The "there" Stein lamented is the place of her youth made real "by human association," as a fellow writer, Wallace Stegner, put it. "(A) place is not a place, " he said, "until people . . . have both experienced and shaped it, as individuals, as families, neighborhoods, and communities, over more than one generation ... it is made a place only by slow accrual, like a coral reef."

In Stevens Point we still have a strong sense of place because the houses, streets, schools, churches, shops - entire neighborhoods - where generations were young and old are still standing. When my daughters come home to Point, they can visit the neighborhood near Church and Division streets where they ran free with a gang of high-spirited kids. But the school where they were in fourth through sixth grades is gone. Emerson School still figures in the dreams of one daughter, but she does not want to visit the empty site.

A similar loss of familiar places could occur near the Church and Division streets neighborhood when the former Business Highway 51 in Plover, Whiting and Stevens Point is reconstructed in the next few years.

The redesign for the city's segment is under way, and no doubt a new design will impact the residential areas along Division Street from Dixon Street on the south to Fourth Avenue on the north. It has yet to be determined whether the impact will be slight or severe.

Mayor Andrew Halverson said it is too early in the design process to say what the new street will look like. He assured me that his administration and the designers from AECOM are "sensitive to the neighborhood and residents." The city is requiring five-to-seven design options, he said, and the plan with the least impact will be the first off the drawing board.

Nonetheless, the situation is worrisome. It's hard to imagine a road design that will not seriously affect the character of these old residential neighborhoods and the larger community's memory of itself.

City officials want a new street that accommodates heavy traffic and improves safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. The traffic count is high, according to Halverson, 16,000 to 18,000 vehicles per day. And the accident rate, especially near the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is one of the highest in the state. I agree, something must be done.

But rebuilding a road to address those concerns typically means wider lanes and intersections. Yet the city doesn't own land along the street; the home owners do. So widening the street would take property from them - unless there are other possibilities.

The civil engineers who are designing the project may have solutions. After an informational meeting presented by AECOM last month, a company designer and a Department of Transportation engineer discussed several strategies that sounded encouraging.

Another way to meet the challenge is to question one of the assumptions: The traffic "is what it is" and must be accommodated. I asked Halverson to consider ways of reducing the number of vehicles on Division and Church streets. Would the city engage major employers in a discussion of employee carpools and park-and-ride schemes?

Ministry Saint Michael's Hospital maintains a successful park-and-ride lot with shuttle buses to and from the hospital for employees. The city has discussed offering parking at the airport off Highway 66 east, the mayor said, and he would support park-and-ride for Whiting and Plover commuters if the villages participated.

The UWSP is likely a destination for many travelers on Division Street.

"We've reached a breaking point," Halverson said, referring to the university's plan to replace a large commuter parking lot with a new science building - without a plan for the displaced vehicles. The mayor discussed installing city parking meters on side streets around the university, a potential component of a citywide parking plan.

I understand the need to address the Division/Church street corridor. It is a major artery carrying commuters to work and school, and it can be dangerous.

But the city also has an obligation to Stevens Point's sense of place. We must redesign this important street to preserve our community so that it is "recognizable to anyone who knew it 20 years ago."

Cathy Dugan is a long-time resident of Stevens Point and observer of local government activities. Her column appears monthly.

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Column: Business 51 redesign must consider past

When Gertrude Stein returned to Oakland, Calif., she couldn't find her childhood home. In its place were new streets and new houses. 'There is no there there,' she famously said.

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